Comforted by His Own Hymn
An informed contributor to The Churchman writes as follows of this hymn’s vogue: “It has been sung at the obsequies of princes and statesmen as well as at the funerals of the poor. It has afforded consolation to the mourner in the palace as well as to the grief-stricken peasant in the cottage. It was a favorite hymn with the good old Queen of England, and it was sung in her death chamber at Osborne. It has sustained the lonely soul of Bishop Hannington when he was a caged prisoner in Central Africa awaiting execution from the hand of a heathen king. They were the sweet stanzas that bound up the broken heart of General Roberts when his only son was placed in a soldier’s grave in South Africa. It has been sung at the interment of authors, actors and statesmen in Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s. When in the cemetery of the village of Chislebon, Wiltshire, England, the early harvest was being gathered and shepherds were folding their flocks, the venerable prelate stood at the head of his eldest son’s open grave as this hymn, so often quoted in the hour of death and sung on the day of burial, struck a note of Christian hope to the bereaved spirit of its author. On this side of the Atlantic the hymn is sung at almost every funeral service conducted in church, and Mr. Coldbeck’s appropriate tune, ‘Pax Tecum,’ is singularly adapted to its soothing and inspiring strains.”
“A good hymn is the most difficult thing to write,” said Alfred, Lord Tennyson. It was not until his eighty-first year that he succeeded in writing his single great hymn, “Crossing the Bar,” although stanzas from his In Memoriam are sung as hymns. It was, therefore, most fitting that its first public use was as an anthem at the poet’s funeral in Westminster Abbey on October 12, 1892. The description of the scene, written by the daughter of the Dean of Westminster, is here quoted in part of the singing of